Three distinct characters: God, Job, Satan.
One question: “Have you considered… ?”
The man, Job, thought he knew enough about God. He believed God, he feared God, shunned evil, was blameless and upright before God. He also prospered, had a large family and abundant resources and wealth. He even did daily offerings just in case anyone in his family may have sinned in their hearts.
The former archangel, Satan, thought he had a handle on everything, thought he could manipulate both God and man, thought he could come out on top, that he knew the heart of Job, that God was a fool to believe Job would trust Him. Satan’s considerate opinion was that Satan was wiser than God.
God, Supreme, Creator of All, Lᴏʀᴅ. All-knowing, all-powerful yet fully able to comprehend His creation’s sense of being. Wise with foresight of consequences and responsibilities. Able to be touched by our personhood. Able to believe in our response to Him being appropriate and yet understanding our ignorance.
Scene: Satan comes before the Lᴏʀᴅ and challenges God’s perspective on Job, that God is wrong. This book quite possibly is the earliest writing of beliefs about God and turns out to be very illuminating. Job does not understand God as fully as he thinks he does. God has not begun to reveal Himself through written dialog but is interacting directly with the main characters. When God declares the truth about Job as He knows it, Satan challenges God’s understanding, that God is not all-knowing, that God is wrong about His belief in Job’s character. God allows Satan to perform limited tests upon Job knowing that Satan will be disproved. Job struggles to understand through his reasoning what is happening but keeps believing that God has Job’s care at heart, no matter what. His wife, the three ‘comforters’ and the young observer all misunderstand Job’s condition and tend to be as much an accuser of Job as the Accuser, Satan.
All considerations mistakenly have only dabs of truth mixed in with misunderstanding God and unawareness of Satan’s root accusations. Satan is the accuser but the well-meaning compatriots also consider only the apparent and miss the reality. The lesson is not really in the misses of Satan, Job or the other five people accusing Job, but rather the fulfilled revelation by the Lᴏʀᴅ of what is real and true and flowing from Him.
The challenge in Job is to see God being God and not getting caught in our expectations of what God must do to be Lᴏʀᴅ. He is Lᴏʀᴅ no matter our opinion of the moment.